Bauhaus style was influenced by the 19th century English designer William Morris who argued that art should meet the needs of society and there should be no distinction between form and function. It was marked by radically simplified forms, the absence of ornamentation, by harmony between the design of an object or building and its function and the idea that mass-production was reconcilable with the individual artistic spirit. These criteria were a good match for the modern city of Tel Aviv, a new Israeli city built in 1909 on sand dunes of the Mediterranean coast.

￼From a postcard, published by S. Adler, Haifa Photo by J. Benor-Kalter

In 1925 as Tel Aviv grew, the innovative Scottish urban planner Patrick Geddes submitted a master plan for the city where he laid out the streets and decided on block size and utilization – Geddes did not prescribe an architectural style for the buildings in the new city. The impetus for…

Backstage is pleased to host Shira Shoval for a Pit Stop to “Start up” your weekend!

She is a textile designer and artist. From Shenkar College in 2009. She is currently working in Tel Aviv in a studio with three friends of her.

We all are waiting for her exhibition in the New Art Gallery of Bat-Yam this coming may and in the mintime in the evening we have the possibility to ask questions and to share our ideas. Dont miss the opportunity!

One great way to explore Tel Aviv is through the Bahaus architecture that is its defining style the so-called “White City”, the central part of Tel Aviv, that is home to the largest concentration of Bauhaus buildings, was named a World Cultural Heritage City by UNESCO in 2003. It’s because this kind of achitecture is inspired to a Modern or International Style, based on the idea that art should serve society and that form should also have function.
The Bahaus‘ City can be discovered by foot. A good palce to stroll is along Rothschild Boulevard and its side streets, which also have cafe’s and restaurants.
Rothschild Boulevard is a very special, small and elegant neighboor. By admiring the architecture and the design of the strict preserved buildings, on the right-hand side the balconies wrap around the building mimicking the corner of the streets. On the left-hand side the baloconies are aligned with the side of the buildings.

Althought it is not the official capital of Israel, The White City is the country’s pulse, the center of the Israelian Economy , culture and cuisine. It’s hard to believe that these streets were nothing but sand dunes.

Having risen from empty sand dunes less than a century ago, Tel Aviv could never hope for the ancient beauty of Israel’s capital.

In the second half of the 19th Century, Jewish pioneers began immigrating here from other parts of the world, and their numbers strained the capacity os the small port. By the late 1880s, Jaffa was overcrowded, rife with disease, and stricken with poverty.

A group of Jewish families moved to the empty sands north of Jaffa to found Neve Tzedek . That was followed by “Ahuzat Bayit” (housing estate) an area to the North of Neve Tzedek that became the precursor of Tel Aviv.

The city took the name “Tel Aviv” on 1909.
“AVIV” for Spring symbolizing renewal and “TEL” is a made manmound accumulating layers of civilization built one over the over symbolizing the ancient.

In the 1930’s and 40’s, the city became known as the

“White City”,

because it was the only one in the world dominated by the International Style of “Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe.

By the 1950’s , however, shoddy imitations of this style led to its decline and many of its buildings fell into disrepair.

The Tel Aviv of today is already vastly different from the Tel Aviv of 50 years ago. Gentrification projects in many neighborhoods are changing the area’s face. Each week rises on another building, and new restaurants and shops appear.

“Look around and try to imagine the scene just 90 years ago, when this teeming metropolis was nothing but sand…”

The name of a city’s streets and squares,
the gaps in its very plan and physical
form, its local monuments and celebrations,
remain as traces and ruins of their
former selves. They are tokens or hieroglyphs
from the past to be literally reread,
reanalyzed, and reworked over time.
Images that arise from particular historic
circumstances come to define our sense
of tradition; they literally manage our
knowledge of the historic.

We understand, through this widely used statement, that the concept of beauty is such a relative one that its defined terms change with whomever is actively doing the perceiving. What holds beauty to one, may not to another. It is a simple enough idea, and apparently resonates truthfully within so many of us for it to have grown to become such a popularly uttered phrasing among the masses. So if a concept such as beauty, can be that subjective, can the same be said for a medium of largely interpretative and conceptual products?
We are speaking, in this case, of ART.